


dark places

by allusive



Series: pokeglobal 3 [5]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon Colosseum & XD
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, and also abuse, cail has a dream/flashback about his fucked up past, fucked up backstory sandwiched by gay thoughts, uhhh theres some cult-related shit in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:42:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25442593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allusive/pseuds/allusive
Summary: He hates Pyrite, but there's nothing else out there for him.Cail reminisces about his past while shooting down a possible future.
Relationships: Leo | Wes/Cail | Masa, Rogueshipping - Relationship
Series: pokeglobal 3 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852948
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	dark places

Dark places have always terrified him.

_ That’s fuckin’ ironic, _ he thinks, sitting against a rock, the night sky glittering with stars (that he can barely see, at this point) above him, surrounded by dark. Like everyone else in Pyrite, he’s always been living in the present. The past and future have never existed for him, nor for anyone in the town. 

His arms rest behind his head comfortably (or at least as comfortable as it can get), and he closes his eyes. Sleeping outside is hardly a comforting thing, especially so close to Pyrite, but he’s been around and doing this long enough to immediately wake up when things are off (his Houndoom is out of its pokeball, curled up beside him in the case he doesn’t). The desert around the town is vast, the ground he’s on is solid enough that he doesn’t sink into it, and the air is a pleasant temperature. He’s not sure what drew him out here tonight, out of all nights. Maybe he’s lonely— he doesn’t really know, nor does he care.

He hates Pyrite. 

It's not something he'll ever admit aloud, something that not even he really realizes. Pyrite is almost all he's  _ ever _ known. Born and raised, he's rarely ever ventured out. It's the only place he knows comfortably enough to stay, and it's most likely the place he'll die at, if he's not careful. He’s already almost died plenty of times living here— but there’s nothing else out there for him.

Except for..

_ No. _

He’s not an idiot. Loving someone in  _ Orre,  _ not even just Pyrite is a death sentence.  _ Trusting  _ anybody besides yourself in Orre is a dangerous game, a risk that he absolutely  _ can’t  _ risk if he wants to live. He’s lived this long without trusting, so why would he start now?

That’s what he’d ask himself, as if he didn’t already trust somebody. He hadn’t meant to, but the devilish smile of his friend comes to his mind as he grits his teeth. It didn’t even matter how much he trusted him, or how much he was in  _ love  _ with him if he was gone. He shouldn’t have let his heart open, he shouldn’t have let himself get attached to someone like  _ him _ , someone so unpredictable and wildly strong, someone so confident yet vulnerable— someone like  _ Wes.  _ Wes was the antithesis of everything he was taught not to trust. Things like stability had always been drilled into his head from his childhood— not by choice. The importance of having money, how to hide from those who would hurt him, how to endure pain, how to bandage injuries— all of these things were taught to him from his own experiences with those that were supposed to be his family. 

He’s never liked talking about his past. 

He was young when his father lost his job at the mine. His family, consisting of him, his father, and his mother moved from their home in the Under to above ground, in Pyrite, where they would live for the rest of their lives. His father would look for a job, while his mother would stay at home and take care of him. He was only a child at the time, but he can still remember the lingering warmth of those days. He remembers the smell of pancakes in the morning as he woke up, the heat of the morning sun on his face, light streaming through the gap in the curtains. He remembers going outside, collecting different rocks and playing with pokemon that his neighbours had— It was a simple but sweet life that he’d never got to fully appreciate before things would eventually go sour. 

While they still had money, things were fine. Looking back, he’s not sure when it began. Maybe it was fated to happen the second that his father lost his job— maybe he should have seen the fraying of the threads from the beginning of it all, before the illusion shattered. He’d always thought that things would be fine as long as his family stayed together— but he's wrong.

If it wasn't the money, the alcohol was the tipping point. He’d never understood addiction when he was younger, the only thing that he knew about it was his father was starting to drink. Empty bottles began to litter their small home, perfect toys for a child like Cail with nothing else to play with— but things that he’d assumed were trash were apparently precious, things that could be collected and recycled, turned into newer things— but more importantly, monetary gain. Each of them could be brought back to the factory for a measly 5 cents, but it’s 5 cents that his parents counted.

It’s the first time he gets hit, and it’s far from being the last. Whenever his father drinks, he becomes a punching bag. Cail learns to keep his head protected, arms over his head and face to make sure that it doesn’t receive any fatal damage. He learns how to feign weakness in order to receive pity. His mother doesn’t stop him, and he can’t blame her— she’s weak, too easily manipulated,  _ corruptible.  _ He doesn’t say anything. He can’t. If he can protect her using his own body, then it will be okay.

From then on, meals become far and few in between, and when he does get fed, it’s always bare scraps. He still holds onto hope that things will get better. His mother still loves him, and maybe his father can find another job and they can go back to being  _ happy. _

He was foolish for holding onto hope. Things like hoping and praying were only for privileged people— despite all his hopes, things only ever got worse. It’s an accident when it happens— he breaks a plate, and whether it be from stress; or maybe she’d just always seen him this way, it’s the breaking point. His mother hurls insults at him, words like daggers hitting him harder than any of his father’s abuse ever could. He wonders if he’s done something  _ wrong,  _ if it’s his fault for not being good enough. He’s  _ scared,  _ shaking, when she drags him by the hair into the basement. It’s barely a basement, if he’s being honest— it’s barely even a room, more like a hole in the floor. 

She leaves him there for four days.

By the time he’s let out he feels like he’s about to die. It’s not the last time he’s thrown in there. Most of his childhood is spent in isolation, and when he closes his eyes even now, he can still remember every little detail of that tiny room. When he’s not locked up in the hole, being thrown scraps of food, he’s an errand boy, being punched for the littlest mistakes. But just as he’s about to give up and start hoping for his own death, by a twist of fate, they begin to treat him nicely again. He thinks it’s a trap at first— with the formative years of his life spent cowering, being beaten, he starts off hostile. They act as if he’s overreacting, as if what they’d done wasn’t terrible. But after two months of being treated like he’d used to be, like they were a family again, he begins to believe that things might be looking up again, maybe someone's finally listened to his dwindling prayers. 

He doesn't see the signs. The talking behind closed doors, the going out every other night in matching robes, leaving him alone in the house, the cryptic prayers they'd offer before every meal, things that they'd never done before— he doesn't ask. Maybe he should have. 

His 14th birthday comes. It’s a night he’ll always remember— but for the wrong reasons. He doesn’t remember what they’d eaten, but they take him out of the house afterwards. A surprise, his mother had told him. His father is quiet, nodding along as he leads the way, and his mother trails behind him (as if she’s making sure he doesn’t run off, but he doesn’t think much of it at the time). They lead him to the entrance to The Under, and to his bewilderment it’s not as deserted as he’d been told. The city seems to be thriving, artificial lights and buildings like a place that he’s only heard of in stories.

Leading him down twisting halls and paths, they end up at a small cave, dark, with air flowing out of it.

And he immediately has a terrible feeling in his gut. 

“M..Ma, I don’t think—” He starts, a chill running up his spine as he looks back at her. 

“Shut up, Cail.” She responds, her eyes like ice— and as if on cue his father grabs him by the hair again, pulling him down towards the ground just like in the past. It’s instinct— he immediately knows that he might die within the next few minutes if he wasn’t careful, and even then, he was sure that they sure as hell weren't going to keep him alive. As he’s dragged, he digs his fingers into the ground, nails scraping uselessly against dirt and rock and only succeeding in getting it under his nails.

Time begins to slow. Maybe he should die here. He was always meant to, what’s the difference if it’s just here, by his father’s hand? What was the point of staying alive if he’s going to continue to suffer? What’s the point if he’s going to only feel pain?

_ That’s not true. _

He wants to live. He wants to go back to those days where his greatest worry was just whether he’d be late for dinner, the days where he was free to do anything he wanted without worry. He’s never asked for anything much, he’s never committed a crime, he doesn’t  _ deserve _ something as horrible as this. He wants to feel alive again, no matter the cost. 

As his hand passes a sharp rock, he grabs it, immediately swinging to hit his father's hand in his hair. When his father recoils in pain, he quickly grabs his hand, forcing him to the ground before he throws a leg over his upper back, then slams the sharp end of the rock directly into the back of his father’s neck. There’s a sickening crunch of the rock piercing flesh before his father begins to choke, gurgling on his own blood. He doesn’t feel an ounce of regret.

_ He had it coming,  _ is all he’s able to think before his mother tackles him off, her hand on the back of his neck pinning him to the dirt below and pulling his shirt up to expose his back. He feels a searing pain on his left shoulder blade, then it drags down slowly to his right hip— and he  _ screams _ , the sharp metal dragging through his flesh like a hot knife through butter. His mother babbles incoherently about how he’s the sacrifice that will make someone proud of them, he’s the last thing standing in their way of a happy life, how much she loves him (and that’s why he has to die— funny how she's decided she loves him after all those years, as if the things they'd done to him never happened) as she continues to drag her knife down his back.  _ It’s not fair, it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not  _ **_fair,_ ** he thinks— all he ever wanted was just to be happy, to trust and to be able to play and to be able to  _ smile _ but  _ he’s not allowed _ , nobody would ever allow him to be happy, he realizes— every little piece of happiness he thought he’s had was only fleeting.

She lifts her knife only to insert it again into his flesh, this time on his right shoulder dragging down to his left hip in an x-formation— the searing pain continues. He doesn’t know what it means, only that he wants it to stop, he  _ needs _ it to stop. As she reaches the intersection of the last cut she’d made he pulls his leg up and hooks the back of his knee over her torso to flip her off of him, then he quickly grabs the knife from her hand, ripping it from her grip by the blade. His grip on the blade tightens as he flips it in his hand, then he drives it right into his mother’s face, piercing her right eye before he quickly pulls it out, stabbing it lower into her mouth, then her throat, then in between her collarbones, then lower, finally digging the sharp blade into her breast and leaving it there. 

By the time he’s done he can barely move, the blood loss rendering his vision hazy. He sees the bloodied and tattered face of his mother underneath him, and the unmoving body of his father diagonally behind, and he laughs. He laughs because he feels nothing, no remorse for his actions. He's killed the only two people that ever loved a broken and useless child like him, undeserving of being seen. He's scared— he wonders if he's going to go to jail. He wonders if jail's anything like the basement. He slowly moves off his mother’s still-warm corpse, dragging himself to the wall and leaning against it, knees pulling themselves up against his chest. The laughs and giggles leaving his mouth slowly turn into choked sobs, his eyes drip with tears and mix with the thick red on his cheeks, and as they idly drip their way down his neck to their final destination on his hands, he finally breathes.

When he finally snaps out of his dream, the sun’s already rising.

The sweat pools on his forehead, sticky and unpleasant. When he realizes that he’s in the desert near Pyrite, and not back  _ there _ , in the dark, he almost cries in relief (but he wipes the tears away before he can actually start doing so). He doesn’t remember when he’d fallen asleep, but it doesn’t matter. Using the rock he’d been propped up against, he stands, knees slightly shaky. His Houndoom rubs up against his leg, a small comfort to him as he gently reaches down to stroke it behind the horns.

As he walks back to Pyrite, pokemon at his heel, he's quiet, in thought. After passing out from blood loss from his injuries back then, he'd found himself at the police station in Pyrite, bandaged and alive— and most importantly, not in jail. The officers explained to him that they'd been tracking a cult, dedicated to shadow pokémon, or Cipher, or something like that— Cail doesn't remember the details too well anymore, but he and his parents had led them right to the hideout, where they'd found him on the brink of death. 

It's not something he's particularly grateful for. He  _ should _ have died right then and there, pathetically, in a puddle of his own blood surrounded by those who were supposed to be his family, repenting for his sins. But he didn't, and he would continue to live, until someone bothered to snuff his life out for him. 

As he draws closer to Pyrite, he thinks about Wes. 

Wes has always had a way of making him feel things that he's never been able to feel. When he's fighting Wes for the fourth time in the same week (either with pokemon or with their fists), or when they're sharing a quiet moment of silence after the battle— Cail's always felt  _ alive _ in his presence, like the things he's done don't even  _ matter _ . He knows he shouldn't trust anybody. It'd be foolish of him to do so— but he does, anyways. 

The first time they'd met, they'd been rivals. Enemies, even— he's never both respected and despised someone so much in his life. As time went by and he'd learned more about him, he'd realized exactly  _ why _ he despised him so much— love and hate are two sides of the same coin, and by despising him he could pretend that he wasn't completely enamoured with everything that Wes did. He hated that he  _ didn't _ hate him. Things would have been so much easier if he was just able to dislike him— but he knows he probably never will. 

His feelings don't matter anymore, anyways. Wes is gone, and he's not going to come back. He'd never look at him the same way that Cail would look at him from across the bar while he wasn't paying attention. He'd never dream about Cail the same way Cail would about him, and Wes most definitely wouldn't  _ love _ him the same way he loved him— but he can't blame him. Wes is a loyal man. Even with the fact that he’s married now aside, he doesn't deserve it. He's nothing but a criminal with no ambition, no future, nothing to make him stand out except for his striking green hair (that Wes can't even see), and even then he's still got nothing else but a mean looking face. Wes is a hero. Cail is nothing but some guy in a town marked for death. 

When he enters Pyrite, he can hear a commotion from the other side of the town. Annoying. 

He doesn't want to pay any attention to it, but his Houndoom paws towards the noise and looks back at him expectedly. Giving in and following, he sighs.  _ This better be fucking worth it, I'm not in the mood to deal with bullsh— _

He can't believe his eyes. 

Like Arceus itself had been listening to his thoughts, Wes is suddenly standing right in front of him, and the second they lock eyes Wes starts walking towards him. His face is serious, and he grabs Cail's hand for a moment before he  _ jumps _ up onto him, swinging his legs around Cail's waist, the momentum almost dragging Cail down to the ground with him. 

"Cail!" He says, in that frustratingly familiar voice of his as he wraps his arms around him, and Cail can feel his eyes watering  _ again _ (but he stops it this time, by burying his face into the crook of Wes's neck) and he wraps his own arms around him in return for a moment. 

"Welcome back, you fucking bastard." 


End file.
